Uunimakkara

Uunimakkara (translates to Oven Sauage) is a traditional Finnish dish and really shows what Finnish food is all about, Simple, Filling and Tasty. This dish takes minutes to make up and so can be done on those nights when you are just too busy to make a more complex meal. There is literally hundreds of versions of this dish, however this is one of my takes upon this classic, warming food.

For it you will need:-

Some lenkkimakkara or for those outside of Finland and have no access to this kind of sausage, you can use Bratwurst/Frankfurter style sausages. One per person.
Good, floury potatoes (Duchess are good) about 150g per person.
Onion, roughly sliced, about 1/2 a medium one per person.
Cheese, any will do, Finland has lots of Edam so that is what I used but a nice mature cheddar will give it a beautiful flavour.
some butter
2 tbsp cream per 150g potatoes
1/2 tbsp of sugar per 1/2 onion
seasoning and some water

First preheat your oven to 200oC. Slice your sausage lengthways, about 3/3 of the way through. Then stuff it with your cheese, I find slicing it is better but grating will suffice. Then put on an oven tray ready for the oven.

Then peel your spuds and put into a pan of lightly salted water. Boil till soft, about 10-15 minutes. Drain out and put back into the original pot. While your are boiling the spuds put your sausages in, they will take about 10-15 minutes too, you will know when they are ready when they start going a nice golden brown colour.

While this is going on, in another frying pan put some butter in it and heat up. Add your onions and sweat until soft, then add the sugar and cook until starting to turn brown. Then add some water, about 2 tablespoon per 1/2 onion and cook until all the water is gone. This will make beautiful caramelised onions, just like from the burger van.

Mash your potatoes, add the cream, some butter and seasoning in there to taste.

Put your mash on the plate, put the sausage on top and the onions topping that. You can serve with some tomato sauce or mustard.

Runeberg's Torte

Today (5th February), is the birthday of Johan Ludvig Runeberg who is the national poet of Finland. He was born in Pietarsaari which is a predominately Swedish speaking city (known as Jakobstad in Swedish) in 1804. His poems mainly focused upon the typical, tough, rural lifestyle of the common Finnish man. is most famous work is Fänrik Ståls sägner which is Swedish for The Tales of Ensign Stål. It was written between 1848 and 1860 and it is about the Finnish War which was a war between the Kingdom of Sweden and the Russian Empire. The result was 'Finland' was surrendered to Russia, this was the start of the so called Grand Duchy of Finland. The first poem within the work Vårt Land (Maamme in Finnish, Our Land in English), has become the National Anthem of Finland by overall convention (as there is no law in Finland establishing it as the National Anthem).

On this day it is traditional to eat Runebergin Torttu (Runeberg's Torte). Legend has it Runeberg's wife, Fredrika, invented the pastry when her husband asked for something sweet but she had nothing in. So in typical good wife style she made up something using what she had, wheat flour, breadcrumbs, almonds, rum, apple jam and sugar. He loved it so much that he had one every morning for breakfast with Punsch (a traditional Swedish Liqueur) from that moment on. The recipe is found in her recipe book but it is now believed that it is a personal version of an earlier recipe created by confectioner Lars Astenius of Porvoo.

A 'traditional' commercially available Runebergin Torttu 

So there is a wee bit behind it, I thought i'd give it a try. The ones you buy from the store look like the above picture. However I have no idea how to make it like that and no home cookery book or website says to make it like that. My Wife told me that Finns make it in muffin trays and so that is exactly what I did. So for you to make you own culturally tasty treat you will need to have:-

250g Baking Margarine or Butter
200g Caster Sugar
2 Eggs
100g Ground Almonds
100g Plain Flour
15 grammes of Gingernut biscuits
1 Thin Crisp (those crunchy flat cracker bread things that healthy people eat)
120g Breadcrumbs
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Rum essence

For the topping:-

Rasberry Jam (You can really use any kind of Jam)
200g icing suagr
1 tbsp water or juice

First turn your oven on to 200oc. In a bowl beat together the Marg and Sugar until fluffy. Then add the eggs, one at a time, mixing it in thoroughly.  In another bowl add the almonds, plain flour, breadcrumbs and baking powder, then crush the biscuits and thin crisp (you can use a food processor or beat it in a bag) and add to the bowl too. Then mix all together than pour into the Marg/Egg mix, combined thoroughly and add the rum.

Then put muffin cases into a muffin tray and put about a tablespoon of the mixture into each case. Place into the middle of the oven and bake for 10 minutes. Take out of oven and leave to cool down.

In a small bowl or cup mix the icing sugar and water together and form an icing. You can either spoon in on the top or pipe it on. In the middle put some Jam and then serve.